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Public Life Matters – Questionnaire

We’ve been asked to help publicising a questionnaire about the involvement of people with lived experience of mental health issues in public life. it seeks to identify the barriers preventing people from taking an active part in civic and public life – and how these can be overcome.

This is part of a partnership research project called Public Life Matters and is funded by DRILL (Disability Research Into Independent Living and Learning). The partnership is led by VOX and includes the Lived Experience Research Collective, the Mental Health Foundation and Strathclyde University.

The first part of the project is an online questionnaire which asks some basic questions about the aspirations (if any) people with lived experience have in civic and public life – it might be anything from working as a volunteer, sitting on tenants’ associations or school boards to seeking election as councillors or MSPs – as well as whether they vote in local or national elections. It also asks what factors deter them from an active public life. It should take less than 15 minutes to fill in.

This is felt to be a very important project as people with lived experience are very much underrepresented in local and national communities and it is in everybody’s interest to rectify this. To achieve their aim, they need to know what the barriers are so that they can recommend measures that might help these to be overcome as part of their final report.